


Hot/Cold

by kalliel



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Brother Feels, Case Fic, Dean's Deal, Desert, Gen, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, POV Dean Winchester, POV Sam Winchester, Protective Sam Winchester, Season/Series 03, Sick Dean Winchester, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-03
Updated: 2010-07-03
Packaged: 2018-04-08 09:55:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4300344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalliel/pseuds/kalliel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's cut and dry; two days, two states, two cases, two brothers.  But there's also one crossroads deal, so fresh that the ink's still drying, and to top it all off, a nasty flu virus, which makes for one sick Dean and one conflicted Sam.  </p><p>Set circa Season 3.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hot/Cold

Nuppeppo, hands down.

Not that that's surprising, and not that he has a choice, but definitely another nuppeppo over _this_. Half-memories of the smell of last night's salt-and-burn, reeking and heat-bloated, send Dean ducking once more into the toilet. He spits up yellow bile after what had better be the last of yesterday's dinner, and sags ragged against the cool of the toilet seat. His abs burn. Everything burns.

Except his hands. Those just shake. "Hey. Get with the program," he rasps, before he realizes that _great_ , he's fucking talking to himself. To his _hands_.

_Get with the program, Winchester. What's a little flu, compared to what you signed up for? Give you a hint--it's hotter than August in a Bakersfield motel with no AC. So grow a pair and deal._

Dean gets up, drowns himself in the sink (water hot from sitting in the pipes), doesn't bother trying to feel less miserable. He bangs a fist against the counter, but the sharp motion sends his stomach roiling again.

Definitely another nuppeppo. But whatever's waiting for them in Arizona works, too. He just hopes Sam shorthands the inquisition he knows he's got waiting for him outside.

 

\--

 

"Morning sickness?" Sam deadpans, without looking up. 

He gives a cup of the motel's complimentary instant coffee a hard shove across the table, keeps his stare fixed on the Cheap Sleep Crossword of the Day, also compliments of the motel. It's the same crossword as yesterday's.

"Shut up." Dean sounds tired and groggy and mostly like he just spent the last ten minutes emptying his internal organs into the toilet, but hey, life could be worse. Could've bought a one-way ticket to Hell. 

Oh _wait._

Dean jumps to grab the cup before it slides right off the Formica, considers its contents, gags, and marches right back to the bathroom.

Sam sighs, and tips the crossword into the wastebasket. It's too hot for this; 7am and already pushing 90 outside. There's a pitcher balanced on a rickety endtable. The water is lukewarm when it hits the plastic cup, which is already heat warped. 

"Here," he says, and hands Dean the water when he returns from the bathroom. "Unless you enjoy dry-retching."

Dean gestures vaguely around the room before downing the water, then chases it with whiskey. "One of those 24-hour bugs, I think."

"Not if you keep that up." But there's no real heat behind the reprimand. There's enough of that between them as it is--and never mind the weather.

Unchastened, Dean takes another swig. "Giving me bad habits, Sammy." To prove his point, he grabs his pack from the foot of the bed, rustles around until he comes up with a bottle of Tylenol, and pops a few more than Sam thinks the bottle prescribes.

"Do you have a fever?"

"Don't know, don't care. Let's just hit the road. Wanna cover as much ground as possible before I--ah." Again with the vague gestures; Sam assumes 'hurl' and 'side of the road' are written in somewhere. "--Got your bags?" Dean finishes instead.

Sam shrugs and pushes past Dean and out the door. He can see the heat spiraling up from the asphalt, bolstered by the mirage that flares out like a backdraft when they open the car doors. He sits gingerly. Before Dean starts the car, Sam offers him another water bottle. "You know, the flu, acetaminophen overdoses, and heat stroke all share the same symptoms."

"That's fascinating, Sam. Know what else does that? Ghosts, demons, and Satanic cults. _People die._ So unless you're gonna diagnose from afar, we have to be in Bisbee before nightfall. Snap to."

 

\--

 

 _"I'm not anti- _immigrant_ , Sam. I'm just saying--it'd be easier if there weren't so many monsters from a damned world map of different lores. Japanese monster, Japan--_not _Bakersfield-fucking-California."_

_"It's a nuppeppo."_

_"It's a fat bastard made out of rotting flesh, is what it is. You salt and burn something like that, and it's like you're all set for a barbecue or something. It's gross."_

_"Yeah, well, 'tis the season." A beat. A clarification. "July 4th, Independence Day."_

_"Independence. Funny."_

__"Don't--" __

_"Aliens, dude. Will Smith. Bill Pullman as President. If that Henricksen guy wasn't still on our asses, I'd totally vote for ol' Bill next go 'round."_

_Too late, a realization._

__You won't be here.

 

\--

 

Dean pulls them through Bakersfield until they hit the 5. Traffic comes to a dead stop, like a train of blazing coffins cresting over into Arizona.

The Impala's vents, hot or cold, haven't graced working order since 1979, and they're not something Dean had seen fit to fix after her encounter with the demonic semi, either. Sam sides wetly in his seat. Between the metal and the black upholstery, he's having difficulty finding a spot on her that's safe to touch.

Sans the cool breeze and the distraction of driving, Dean's looking pretty bent. Deep breath, convlusive swallow, brow wipe. (Don't bother rinsing; just repeat.)

"Dude, we're grid-locked. You should try to sleep it off a little. And I can drive, oh...zero miles an hour. I'm not going to break anything."

Dean runs his fingers back through wet hair and leans against the drivers-side door, then pulls back quickly from the hot metal.

"Dean?"

"What?"

"Did you hear me?"

"Mm."

"I _said_ that while traffic's locked up, we should switch places. You could sleep."

"Sleep. You're funny."

"Okay, fine. Curb's on this side of the car, if you wanna puke. Other than that, you can get run over while you're bent double in the middle of the Interstate, or you can do it in the back seat. I can think of at least one person who thinks Door Number One's looking pretty awesome."

They switch. Dean empties himself on the curbside.

Sam crawls forward a few feet in the traffic, and when Dean doesn't echo the movement, he calls back, "Find a nice piece of real estate back there?"

Dean groans. He's sitting on the narrow sidewalk with his back against the freeway railing. "God, just leave me here so I can die in peace. And yeah, fuck you, too." 

The last is directed at the occupants of the car behind them. Sam watches their reflections avert their eyes conspicuously in his rear-view mirror. Again, he lurches forward with the traffic, and an anxious, chilling flutter bats at his insides when he realizes he might actually have to get out and retrieve Dean, because that would portend an entirely different level of of _sick_ , and--

"Dean?"

Dean drops his arms from their perch atop his knees and heaves himself upright, trundles the ten feet Sam's progressed.

Sam sighs with relief, chastises himself for the panic (it's hot; it's really hot), and hands Dean the water bottle once the car door clatters shut. "Drink this."

Dean doesn't appear to find the notion all that palatable. "That's practically a rolling boil, Sam. And it's all going to come back up anyway."

"I don't care. Just drink it."

And Dean does, wearing a grimace of revulsion that makes it looks like Sam's just asked him to down cyanide. "This is why no one likes you, Dean. You're a pain in the _ass_."

Dean pops a few more Tylenol, and makes a show of finishing the last of the water. "Hey, at least Jonestown had ice."

 

He grows less talkative as the hour winds down, until he hits a feverish, sunburnt shade of pale and all but rolls out of the Impala and coughs up water and undissolved bits of Tylenol. His stomach doesn't stop there. The fruitless, guttural noise Dean makes as he dry-retches curdles the contents of Sam's own stomach. Sam wets his lips, musters a swallow, and wishes he hadn't forced all of the water on Dean, because he was right--it was now soaking into the sidewalk, rather than serving some more useful purpose. Sam tries to cool his face by blowing a thin burst of air up towards his bangs.

"Hey." Sam turns. It's the guy from the car behind them. "Your bulimic boyfriend gonna keep doing that every hour? 'Cause my girl and I are about to call Poison Control or something. It's fucking disgusting, sitting in traffic next to all that."

God, Sam hates people. He hates traffic, he hates July, he hates Californians ( _yes_ ), and he hates that it feels like their whole lives are on display in the middle of the goddamned freeway. It's not, really; no ghosts to blow their cover as young antique dealers or park rangers or--because _that's_ a classic--lipo doctors, no demons to start rattling off the terms of whatever contracts they've signed, whatever souls they've sold; but it's Dean, and he's sick, and it's just such _bull_ shit, anyway. He hates that Dean's sick (and he's dying) and _freeway people_ are watching (and Hell is cheering) and there's no safe place to run, or magic words that will make this all go away.

"Hey, tough guy." It's Dean. Dean, who at some point had rounded the car, is now tapping Freeway Guy on the shoulder. "Might want to get back in your car and crank up them happy showtunes, or I swear to God I'm going to fuck with you all the way to Riverside."

Sam's first thought is, _Please don't._ Freeway Guy widens his stance provocatively, asks Dean if _what, you gonna take a swing at me? Or are you going to puke all over my shoes._

Dean pulls something from his jeans pocket, Sam hears the flip of a switchblade, and Freeway Guy goes back to his car, says he doesn't feel like dealing with fucking sociopaths on a Tuesday afternoon.

Dean bangs insistently on the driver's door and Sam obliges him by moving to shotgun. Then he hisses, _"Are_ you a fucking sociopath? What part of 'traffic jam, dozens of civilians' don't you understand?"

"Low on options." Dean flinches away as he slams the door shut, breathing sharp and harried. "Bag."

"What?"

_"Bag."_

Sam understands Dean's body language more than the verbal command, and all but leaps into the backseat trying to unearth a servicable paper sack.

Dean turns out facing the driver's door with the bag and heaves nothing but raw, hot air into it.

"You know," starts Sam, when Dean's breathing has evened somewhat and he's stopped shuddering with the effort of throwing up nothing. "At this point, I don't think it matters whether we reach Bisbee by sundown or not. We could pull off at the next turn-off, shack up someplace quiet and air-conditioned."

Dean's hands shake slightly as he draws up to take the wheel. "You can go it alone."

 _Alone_. The word catches on dark things. Dean must notice Sam's sudden reticence, because he continues, "It's one night, dude. Besides, research is your favorite part of the gig. Wouldn't want to intrude on your private time, geek boy."

 

_You can go it alone._

 

\--

 

_"I can't believe nuppeppos eat this shit." Dean pokes at one of the red hazmat bags with his boot. It wobbles._

_"Yeah, well, I'm gonna count us lucky. It's gotta come to feed, and if we have to salt and burn, I'm just glad it eats something flammable."_

_"Deep-fried...rotting...demon flesh. Who wants seconds?"_

_"You're sick."_

_"If you don't need me, I'm cool with going back and sitting in the car, man." He starts in on an only-half stifled chuckle. "Here, take the lighter; you don't need to tell me tw--"_

_"Stay right here."_

 

Just stay right here.

 

\--

 

 _Paradise_ , Bisbee, Arizona is not. It's around nine when Dean pulls into the motel lot. There's clouds, grey and heavy, keeping the heat in. The electricity in the air is palpable when Sam steps out, storm clusters nestled in the thick air like limpet mines.

Forget paradise; it's not even an oasis. Sam's anxiety only bloats with time. He acquires a room, smiles his way through three different conversations about the weather, about travel, about nothing, an endless parade of words and interrogations and Sam really wishes they could be left alone. Just one night.

_It's one night._

Dean wavers with vertigo when he exits the car and when he stakes claim to the bed nearest the door, but thankfully he seems to have exhausted his need to vomit on the hour, every hour. More Tylenol, more water (ice cold from the faucet, which is as much bizarre as it is undesirable). He's out and dead to the world before Sam's satisfied with the amount of fluids in his system, but sleep's as effective a curative as any Sam can administer. It's not something either of them have had much of, historically, so maybe it's even better.

The air outside is alive with electricity, but dead of movement and devoid of sound. The room is quiet, too; quiet like emptiness and lostness. At which point Sam might understand Dean's incessant need to call him out on his attitude. _Just this once._ Because this is getting ridiculous and maudlin and just--

Yes, Dean is going to Hell. No, you haven't found a way to stop it. Yes, there's a near-bulletproof guarantee that you will never find one. No, Dean's not making this easy for anybody. Because that's Dean. 

But you're Sam Winchester, and you've always known you were destined for better things, _so pull it together._ Armed with a flashlight and a granola bar, Dad's journal, and what weapons he can carry, Sam Winchester has someone to save.

Her name and address are printed neatly in Dean's handwriting on the back of a gas receipt. Hear tell a Miss Sarah Hadley has been having some midnight visitors.

 

"Right off the freeway and nine floors up, and you can still hear coyotes." Miss Hadley smiles thinly and frets with the weave of her sofa cover. She's been knitting a scarf, as well. Sam asks her if she gets cold at night.

"Sometimes." She knows it's a flimsy answer; she can see the thermometer as well as Sam can, and it's still hovering around 87. "There are cold patches, sometimes." It's Arizona. It's the desert. It's--

"Those pesky coyotes?" Sam asks, when Miss Hadley cranes her neck and stares watchful over his shoulder. 

She nods, hesitant.

Sam doesn't hear anything. "And you said your brother's cancer has been in remission for how long? Ten years?"

Ten years, she confirms. Then she breaks, like she can hear the disbelief in Sam's voice. " _They're_ coming for him, too. Renege on their deal. They want to take him back. _Please_ \--save him."

 _They_. So she does know. Sam's compassion yo-yos, and he isn't sure if he wants to scream at this woman, _What the fuck were you thinking_ or hug her, and tell her that he knows. He knows. (He knows.)

He does neither. Instead, Sam begins to explain, demons can't go back on their word. They're contractually bound to--

Miss Hadley rolls her eyes and flashes Sam the binding seal her wrist. "Sammy, you don't have a _clue_ what a demon can do."

 

\--

 

 _"Sam--_ Sam! _" --Which isn't quite loud or quick or urgent enough. It drops right on top of him, and Sam is about a minute, give or take, from asphyxiating inside a prison of rotting flesh._

_Dean has a half dozen bags of human fat, a machete, and a lighter. All useless, if Sam is stuck inside._

_The nuppeppo has no eyes, no mouth, no outward malice. It's a walking manifestation of slaughterhouse refuse. It's something that happens. And see, something about that seems wrong--how something allegedly 'natural' can_ be _a semi-sentient mound of dissolving muscle and brittle tendon. Seriously, what the _fuck_. If all were right in the world, the two would be mutually exclusive, right?_

_Kind of like--_

__Deal's done and there's nothing you can do about it, Sam. __

_and_

__This is what you wanted, Dean. __

_Isn't that right?_

 

\--

 

Sam flicks on the light. "We have a problem."

Nothing. 

"Dean?"

Sam's blood pressure jumps twice his standard, and he really needs to stop reacting like that, because moments later, Dean shifts. "Time?"

"We have a problem," Sam repeats tensely. "It's around 3:30, so we have a little under two hours until we have a much bigger problem." He paces about the room, breathless from the sprint over. "How're you doing?"

Not plunging into the night half-cocked, at least. "What, uh--what kind of 'problem' are we talking here?" Dean has one arm draped over his eyes and one cradling his stomach. Tentatively he rolls onto his side and upright from there, until he's sitting hunched on the side of the bed. "It's fucking freezing in here, dude. Givin' me chills."

Fuck. Clearly, Dean's still sick; how long has it been since twenty-four hours felt this long? _Couple months, give or take_. Though it's not really an exact art, the flu, so the twenty-four is arbitrary-- _how long is a year, in a demon's mind? Shave a day, an hour, a week--_

"Sam--"

Back to reality. "I don't know."

Deans brows knit as he processes this. He winces, kneads the center of his forehead with his fist. "You--what? You didn't..."

Sam takes a deep breath. _Just slow it down._ Breathe. "I'm not _sure_. It could be a crossroads deal gone sour; she could have lied about that, I don't know. But there's a demon. I saw the binding seal on Sarah Hadley's arm like mine when--" Sam twists his forearm uncomfortably.

Dean pushes past him on the way to the sink, where he jumps at the frigidity of the water as he splashes it onto his face. "Holy _shit_ that's cold. What the hell is wrong with-- So wait. What'd you do with it? The demon."

"Well, I...got it out of Sarah Hadley. Dropped her off at the neighbor's."

"Okay, yeah, but what did you do with the _demon_ , Sam."

"Um, nothing, yet."

Dean falls back on Sam's undisturbed bed and runs his fingers down his face. "Dude, Points A, B, and C. I don't want to have to... _infer_ anything. We're in a time squeeze, aren't we? Skip to the important parts."

"I improvised a little. Back in the day, charms were used to keep demons _out_ , right? So I did that, and it seems--"

"Seems--?"

"--Like it's trapped _in_ the house. But only until sunrise, because the local lore is under the strange impression that demons work 'under the cover of darkness' or something, so we've got... An hour and a half, now."

"Attaboy, Sam. You have your demon, your Latin; I don't see--"

"Sarah Hadley lives on the ninth floor of an apartment complex. I couldn't block _every_ exit. It's somewhere between nine and the roof. Ten is just a penthouse, which seem like mostly managerial storage space. So we've got some ground to cover, and--"

"There's an _and_?"

"--It might be after her brother. But I don't know. It might have lied."

Dean is still confused. "You didn't take him to the neighbor's with the Sarah girl?"

But then, so is Sam. That's why he's here, relaying all this in the first place. Isn't it? "I, uh. I couldn't find the brother."

"Sam, you're making it sound like he got stuffed in a broom closet or something. How do you _not_ \--"

"Well, he might _have_ been, okay? I didn't find him. I don't even know if he actually exists. But if he's there, he needs out. If he's not, then he's safe, so-- I just. I need-- It'd be better if there were two of us and we split the ground." He tapers off, heated urgency dissipated. Back in the apartment, when he'd been wrestling a demonic Sarah Hadley to the ground and tagging windows with frantic panic, going back and getting Dean had seemed like a much more solid plan.

Now it seemed a little juvenile. _Seriously?_ "Actually, you know what. Stay here," he says, even though he knows that now Dean is up, and now Dean is coming (or maybe _because_ he knows). "You should just--"

"Let's go, Sam."

 

\--

 

_The nuppeppo is unexpectedly sinewy, for something that subsists on fat. It sticks and grabs and pulls Dean in, even as he's wrestling the thing to the ground, tearing through limp muscle and tendon. He breathes through his mouth, but the stench trickles in anyway. He gags. He digs deeper._

_Because somewhere, there is Sam._

_It's sticky, the nuppeppo. Sticky and stringy and leaking blood and pus and god knows what. It tries to reform, right itself, and then,_ then _, the machete is good for something. "Don't you fucking dare," Dean threatens, though the nuppeppo has no ears, no brain. Like a jellyfish--isn't that what Sam had said? Then Dean stops talking and saves the air expressly for the purpose of breathing._

There he is. 

_Left--four, five inches down. There he is. Dean scrapes at the meat with both hands. It feels uncomfortably like he's digging through someone's chest cavity. Tearing at flesh, getting ready to eat it right up--and_ God _, what is wrong with you, Dean. Stop thinking about food._

_Sam's face is wrapped in a mucous membrane, which makes him look like a spider's dinner, or an unhatched duckling. But it kept him from choking down nuppeppo parts, so Dean imagines Sam really can't complain._

_When Dean tears it away, Sam takes a gigantic, gasping breath, croaking and straining. He promptly vomits. But they're out. They grab each other and pull out of the sticky what-the-fuck-seriously? mess, and they're out._

_Sam fumbles with Dean's pocket, stripping mucous and rotted ropes of flesh from the seams, and excavates the lighter. Flips it on, throws it in. The nuppeppo burns like an oil lamp._

_They watch it blacken, the wet smell of rancid flesh rising up in plumes. It seeps into their clothing, their skin. Everything._

_"Think we can snake come extra soap from the front desk?" Dean says, finally. "You can charm the desk clerk with that pretty hair of yours. I'm liking the new gel. Very slick."_

_Sam pushes him into a puddle of gutter water and fatty refuse._

 

\--

 

Seventh floor. The air, if anything, is hotter and thicker as they climb. He can feel it weighing on his shoulders.

"We're almost there, Dean."

Dean waves him off. He's leaning into the railing, hands on his thighs, head down. Sam puts a hand to the small of Dean's back, and it comes away hot and wet. Dean draws a shuddering breath, followed by a flurry of short, clipped ones.

"Slower," says Sam. And Dean slows, though he's still a pace or so from hyperventilation. "Two more flights." He doesn't say _it's not so bad_ , because it _does_ seem far, and it's not as though R &R's waiting for them at the top. If anything, Sam should be more worried about getting Dean through the job than up the stairs.

But he's not. Whatever happens, Dean's ability to shoot straight will be the last thing to go--of that much, he's sure. Sam smiles, because his brother is a freak of nature. He frowns, because he can't believe he's actually testing the theory.

Dean is not infallible, and Sam is not an idiot; he knows. Has proven it a few times himself. The last time Sam hero worshipped anything, he was nine, and he thought his father was a high powered marketing executive. But still, it--

"How bad?" Sam asks, though he's sure he can guess. How bad is running a fever in Hell's Seventh? _Don't think about Hell._

Dean nudges Sam up towards Floor 8 with a pat to the ass, and sinks down, head rested against the cool of the concrete stairwell. _Go._

Sam hesitates. "C'mon, Dean, I'm not going to leave you to pass out in a stairwell." He laughs, tight with darker things than the day warrants. "I'll take our chances with the demon."

Dean flaps his hands at him again, his intentions non-explicit. Then he jerks away, nearly pitching over the edge of the stair, and retches water and stomach acid down the stairs. It dribbles down sluggishly, pooling in the uneven divots and pocks in the stairs. "Coulda just done that on you, Sammy," Dean pants, wiping the corners of his mouth with the back of his hand. "But then I thought, you've only got the one pair of demon-hunting shoes. And I'm an awesome brother." 

The aftertaste of a smile finds Sam's lips, but not the genuine article. Dean might act like he finds pale and shaky and delirious hilarious, but if he has to choose between his pride and his ass, there's no contest. So long as he remembers that's what's on the line. Sam holds out a hand to help Dean to his feet. _Are you okay?_

 

Indecision. A shaky breath. "--Give me a sec?"

 

\--

 

_"These nuppeppo things."_

_Sam turns to him, eyelids heavy with exhaustion, hair drooping with... Well, with gross nuppeppo shit, and Dean leaves it at that._

_"According to legend, eating their flesh grants a person eternal youth."_

_"That's stupid._ And disgusting, _" Sam replies morosely. "Do we have any more matches? There are...parts of this thing that don't seem like they're going to burn in the next hour, and I think this shit is starting to harden in my hair."_

_There are always more matches. Dean shuffles over to the nuppeppo remains and drops another match onto the charred mess._

_"Put another one by that big lump."_

_Dean lights another match. Illuminated, the nuppeppo looks just as classy as it smells. He digs at the mound with the machete until the flesh is better dispersed. The blade comes away with strings of meat clinging to the edge._ Fucking thing dulled the blade, _he mutters. When he renews his seat next to Sam, he turns the machete in the vaporous green lamplight._

 _"And the flesh of a_ dead _nuppeppo--"_

_"God, do you ever shut up? If you're pining after your damn nuppeppo, I'm sure there're more. Just send me a postcard, 'cause I'm not coming with."_

_Dean wipes the machete of stringy flesh with his hands. It's not like they're clean, by any measure. "Eating the_ dead _flesh curses the dumb, hungry bastard with eternal damnation." He raises his fingers above his face, flesh hanging down like writhing hair. "Whaddaya say we give it a try?"_

_Dean's fingers inch lower, toward his open mouth, his tongue extended._

_Sam's on him so fast--wrenching his arm to the side, knees jabbing into Dean's lungs--that Dean goes down with little retaliation. His head rings from its unexpected encounter with the asphalt. And Sam is shouting, throwing punches anywhere he can land them (which is pretty much anywhere, Dean discovers with a pained grunt). Dean hasn't seem him this pissed in a long time--if ever._

_"Dude!_ Dude _. Stop! It was a joke. Whatever happened to 'go ahead, smartass; not like it's any different from the crap you_ usually _eat'? I mean--_

_"C'mon, Sammy."_

_Sam gives him one last jab to the shoulder, but backs down._

_"Come on."_

_Sam storms to the car and doesn't look back._

 

\--

 

Sam feels like he's nine years old, and he just called his big brother to his bedroom to inspect the closet for the monsters that aren't there. He feels small.

 _But there_ are _monsters._

There's one demon. One he's already exorcised and trapped. That puts it dangling over the precipice already--it's good as gone. It's a one-night job.

But it's the army of demons behind it Sam can't put from his mind. The army of demons and the nights and nights and nights he's going to spend with them (alone). That's why he-- 

Sam needs Dean here. Maybe the Hadleys don't, but Sam does.

"Sam--" Back to the Here and Now. "Find the--" Dean braces himself against the wall and kneads his forehead. " _Goddamn_ it, goddamn it, goddamn it!" He continues his litany of curses.

"Are you all r--"

"No," Dean wheezes. "And you know what? Saunas? Overrated. I swear it's 107 in here, and I _still_ ache. And there were stairs. So you just find yourself a demon to exorcise, and I'll grab the kid, so we can hightail it back to a nice _cold_ bed." Deep breath. "If he's real. If the demon's not in him already. If I don't, you know, start hallucinating shit first, or something."

Sam just nods. Gulit makes everything else leaden, damps the irritation that's playing twin to Dean's frustration. Then, "I'll take Floor Ten."

"And, uh. Sam?" He holds up his wrist, anti-possession charm a bright, sharp outline in the blurry mugginess of the room, and Sam echoes the gesture. "Good."

 

The demon's not there. The building is locked down--he checked--and every closet, clamshell desk, and cabinet is clean--he gutted them. Vents? Clean. No cracks, no crevices, no holes; every shadow, bleached with light. There's only so many places black smoke can hide. _Guess that means the Hadley brother is real._ Real--and fucked.

Sam wipes the sweat from his brow and works his pace up to a brisk jog. "Dean!"

The Hadley apartment looks worked over and fruitless. The other ninth floor apartment boasts a jimmied lock. The front door opens into darkness and quiet, and appears undisturbed. "Dean? You in here?"

"Loud, for a hunter." A man's voice, from the master bedroom.

"Yeah, well"--Dean this time--"You knew he was coming. Why waste time with stealth? _Sam--!_ "

Show time.

Sam bursts in, holy water whipping from his flask before he clears the threshold. It catches the demon straight up the side and it falters, leaves an opening for Sam to wrestle its vessel to the ground. Dean slumps against the far wall, motionless.

"The journal!" Sam's hands are doused with holy water, and they brand themselves onto the Hadley brother's biceps. "The journal; it's in my bag. Go--"

Dean crawls to Sam and the demon and pulls the journal out.

Sam jabs his elbow into the Hadley brother's throat with one arm and splashes holy water down his gaping mouth with the other. "The page is marked with a--"

"Yeah, I see that, Sam, I--"

"Then what are you waiting for?" Sam gasps, as the demon brings the Hadley brother's knee to his sternum. He swivels to face Dean.

Dean wipes at his eyes, as if to refocus his vision, and squints. He kneads his forehead.

 _Problems?_ the demon mouths, and the Hadley brother's lips crack with dryness. Blood beads at the cracks. It wrenches Sam to the side and kicks back, clips Dean hard in the jaw with the heel of the Hadley brother's boot.

Not good. _Think fast, Sam._

He looks at his wrist.

"Sam Winchester," says the Hadley brother's mouth, as he regains his footing and stalks toward Dean's limp form. "And his big brother, Dean. This is just _so_ \--I mean. The both of you! You can't handle one little me, and _you're_ the guys who're supposed to finish what you started in Wyoming? Hell's Gate, hundreds of demons freed--don't get me wrong, I'm grateful. In a demonic sort of way. But _you?_ This is just pathetic."

"I know," Sam pants.

It plucks Dad's journal from Dean and rounds back toward Sam. It kneels so close to his face that Sam can smell the Hadley brother's sweat-drenched jeans. When the demon reaches out to grab his chin, Sam jerks back. Loops his anti-possession charm around the Hadley brother's wrist and pulls taut, until the skin drains white under the pressure.

He lunges sideways and swipes the Hadley brother's legs out from under him, pins the demon again.

A beat.

"I'm already in him, kid. What do you think--"

"Oh, I know. But the warding spell on the building... Locked you in, didn't it? Let's call this minimizing the playing field. You're not getting out of this body 'til I _force_ you out." 

Sam begins the incantation.

The Hadley brother is already beginning to froth black plumes from his mouth when the demon titters, "Don't play with things you don't understand, little boy." And immediately, Sam realizes something is wrong.

The last words leave him, but the demon doesn't leave the Hadley brother. It boils under his skin, veins pulsing and bulging. It's like he has a swarm buzzing in his insides, and bruises blossom up dark as his capillaries implode and his arteries wreck.

His skin splits, and the demon screeches as it's expelled, in a rain of blood and fat and muscle.

The demon is gone, and so is--dog tags, metallic-bright against the dark seep of blood, not unlike Sam's charm-- _HADLEY, Barker_.

Sam chokes back a tired sob.

 

_You can go it alone._

 

When Sam shakes Dean back into consciousness, the first words out of his mouth are, "Hadley brother's not a kid. Fully-grown _man_."

Sam sniffs. "Yeah, I figured that out." He takes Dean's arm and drapes it around his shoulder. Heaves him up.

"Grown men are _heavy._ "

Sam twists under Dean's weight, which he doesn't seem to be trying very hard to support on his own. He grunts. "I'm seeing that."

"You get it?"

Hesitation. "Yeah."

"And the Hadley guy?"

Sam stumbles into the stairwell and Dean nearly takes them down the fast, painful way. "I'll take care of him after I dump you in the car."

Dean smiles. "Attaboy, Sammy."

 

\--

 

 _It's at least four. The nuppeppo burned all night. Dean's feeling unsettled, nauseous; like he's on the cusp of something that sure as hell ain't gonna be fun in a few hours. Sam insists on talking. He's not going to apologize for overreacting in the alley, and Dean doesn't expect that he would. He's not even sure Sam_ should _, though it'd certainly make Dean's part in all this easier._

_"After you and Dad split up, what did you do?"_

_Huh. Well, that's a left fielder. "I...fled to Vegas and started my career on the streets, selling scorching sex to the indiscriminate masses." He cocks his head, gives Sam an inquisitive look. "I hunted. What do you think I did?"_

_"What did you do when you were alone?" Sam tries again._

_"I..._ hunted. _" Dean says carefully. "I drove around, I hustled pool, I got laid, I jacked off, I--"_

 _"_ Stop _\--"_

 _"Well, what do you want me to say, Sam? I did the exact same things I'm_ still _doing. Except apparently I had more_ fun _, because I didn't have to stop and fill out a survey every morning."_

_"God, just shut up for a second. I mean, like." Sam frowns. "When you didn't have anyone to cover your back, what did you do when you got sick, or--"_

_"I didn't."_

_Or drunk or hurt or--_

__(lying in the backseat of the Impala, nursing a makeshift tourniquet--and well, if he bleeds out, it's not like they're gonna find him any time soon. Maybe they won't find him at all. So Dean drinks deep and passes out and if he wakes up in the morning, he guesses that'd be fine, too. He doesn't have a death wish; living's just optional) __

_"What? I didn't, okay? Maybe I'm allergic to you. My immune system finally gave in after all this mother hen-ing you've been doing. What does it matter? I'm here. You're here--"_

_"What do_ I _do"--and Dean shuts up--"when you're not?"_

 

\--

 

Sam takes Barker Hadley's body out to the desert alone.

He can't bury him; not with the ground cracked and hard-baked like this. _It was those damned coyotes_ , he imagines Sarah explaining to her neighbors. There are tears in Sam's imagination, but not in his eyes. 

He knows how the scenario plays out, because he knows what he's going to tell her before they leave. _It was those damned coyotes. They found him in the desert. We don't know what he was doing out there._

Sam leaves Barker Hadley, a pile of shredded rotting-already? meat, alone in the desert.

And he thinks, in ten months, he'll be here again. Deserted. There won't be anyone to comfort him with lies. Dean's are the only ones Sam still believes. _'S gonna be okay, Sammy._

 

Sam goes back to wipe Barker Hadley's insides from the floor of his bedroom.

 

\--

 

Dean washes the blood from the charm Sam leaves sticky on the dashboard, with the Hadley brother's tags. His vision spins and the charm... _pulses_ , but it looks cleaner, in any case. He knows Sam's gone to the desert to finish the job.

Dad taught them to bury their failures.

He stares feverishly into the dark. He saw the red coating the floor, smelled it on Sam's clothes. It's not Sam who failed. In fact, it's hardly ever Sam. He's gonna be fine. He'll be fine.

"Sorry, Sammy."

 

\--

 

7am in Bisbee, Arizona, and it's already pushing 90. Only now it's raining, too.

"You did good," says Dean.

Sam nods.

"I still feel like shit," says Dean.

Sam drives.

"You did good," says Dean, again. And again, Sam nods. "On your own. You did good."

Sam drives.

"Pretty easy, huh?"

Sam swallows. 

Dean fills the silence. "Pretty easy."

Then he sleeps. Sam can't look at him.

 

_Easier than words._


End file.
